Want to be cheered up at the end of this benighted year? Okay, how’s this? It’s starting to look like interstellar travel may be possible in a time frame that would be manageable for human beings.

No, it’s not a cure for cancer. But we know that we are bound to find that eventually, so long as our civilisation is not destroyed by war or global warming or a random asteroid strike. Until very recently, our understanding of science told us that travel even to the nearest stars will never be possible.

That may still be true, for the answers are not all in yet. But last April the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave James Woodward and the Space Studies Institute a Phase 2 grant under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts programme.

They got a Phase 1 grant in 2017 to work on their proposed space drive. They made enough progress to keep NASA happy and themselves credible, and they have now been funded to test new designs that increase the thrust produced by their Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive. If that scales up satisfactorily, we will one day be able to build spaceships that go to the stars.

Propellentless propulsion is a Holy Grail of star travel. But it remains to be seen if it will ever come to pass. The only way humans will ever physically travel to the stars will either be via this method or by traversable wormholes. All other methods are doomed to failure. To read more, click here.